User talk:Josiah Rowe

Re: Lots to do, where to begin?

Greetings Josiah, and welcome aboard! I'm very pleased with your enthusiasm for the project and greatly apprecaite the input you've given and the edits you've made.

To address some of your questions, I had thought of calling the site "The Matrix," but that might lead people to think this was a wiki about a certain Keanu Reeves film trilogy. "Amplified Panatropic Computer Network" would have been too cumbersome a name, plus it would make the URL too long unless I specified "APCN" as the desired URL. Plus, folks who have only recently been introduced to Doctor Who or had not seen "The Deadly Assassin" might not recognize either "Amplified Panatropic Computer Network" or "APCN" as Doctor Who references. I wanted a name that would be instantly recognizable as being related to Who, and since "TARDIS Information System" had the word "TARDIS" in it, and referred to a searchable database, I chose that. Of course, I've since changed the project name to "TARDIS Index File," for reasons mentioned in the Talk on that subject.

As for the first order of business, I honestly haven't a clue where to begin. Though it would seem to make since that if we expect people to contribute to this wiki, we should give them some idea of how to do it, since not all of them will be familiar with wiki, and also make it easier for them to find their way around the site. Yes, the Help section needs to be developed further. The Community Portal needs work. Articles on the Doctor, Gallifrey, the stories and so forth, can probably get done as we get to them. Conventions can also be worked out later, but not too much later, else we'll have a truckload of entries that will need editing to bring them within the confines of these conventions.

Thanks for the input, Freethinker! --Josiah Rowe 17:49, 23 Feb 2005 (GMT)

Sysop Status?

In light of your contributions and familiarity with wiki, I am considering granting you sysop status. Please let me know if you are interested. Thanks.

--Freethinker1of1 20:38, 8 Mar 2005 (GMT)

(copied from User talk:Freethinker1of1)

Your kind sysop offer

I might be interested (although my wiki skills are really only fair-to-middling). However, I can't guarantee a constant presence on the boards. My work schedule is such that I'm likely to have a week with lots of free time, then a couple of weeks with no time at all. (I'm an on-off moderator at Outpost Gallifrey's Forum for the same reason.)

So if you don't mind if I'm occasionally absent for a long stretch of time, I'd be happy to become a sysop (although I've still got a lot to learn about wiki stuff). --Josiah Rowe 06:44, 12 Mar 2005 (GMT)

Was it you?

I have been on Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk and looked at the guestbook. I was wondering if the entries were put there by the BBC or if they are actually sent in by real fans as there are entries from Mr. Yates and I wondered if they were official. Then I saw the name Josiah Rowe and wondered if you sent it in? --GingerM 17:52, 1 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Yep, it was me.

An age ago, you wrote:

I have been on Whoisdoctorwho.co.uk and looked at the guestbook. I was wondering if the entries were put there by the BBC or if they are actually sent in by real fans as there are entries from Mr. Yates and I wondered if they were official. Then I saw the name Josiah Rowe and wondered if you sent it in? --GingerM 17:52, 1 Sep 2005 (UTC)

The answer is yes, that was me. I don't know whether the entries from "Mr. Yates" and "Sarah Jane Smith" were written by the web team or other fans, but the Josiah Rowe entry was me.

(Sorry it took me so long to get back to you— I hadn't been on Wikicities for a while, having sort of defected to WikiProject Doctor Who on Wikipedia.) —Josiah Rowe 20:57, 23 Oct 2005 (UTC)

Your input is needed!

You are invited to join the discussion at Forum:Can we disable visual editor please?.

czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">18:09: Tue 20 Dec 2011 

Featured article system

Hey Josiah! I notice you've stopped by recently, so I'm gonna try leaving a message here before going to user talk:Josiah Rowe.

Since you have experience both on Wikipedia and Wikia, I was wondering if you had any thoughts on how we could best implement some sort of featured article "process" here. Would a straight import of the Wikipedia system — with Template:ArticleHistory and all that — be advisable? Or is that system overly ambitious for a Wikia wiki, due to its smaller userbase? I've looked at what Wookieepedia and MemAlpha do, and there are lessons to be learned there. But I'm kind of hoping that since you're a Wikipedia leader with experience over here, you might have some thoughts on how to get smaller communities to build articles in a more cooperative and purposeful way.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">21:29: Sat 14 Apr 2012 

I'm honored that you'd ask for my input, but I'm afraid that I'm really not very knowledgeable about "process" matters like this. ("I know so very little about telebiogenesis.") In fact, I've severely cut back on my Wikipedia contributions in part because I don't have the time or the inclination to fight through all the red tape over there (not to mention real-life stuff, like the birth of my daughter).

That said, my gut feeling is that there's no need for the FA process here to be as formal and stultifying as it is at Wikipedia. The key is to establish a core group of reviewers, who can determine appropriate criteria and apply them to candidate articles. Once that's in place, there could be incentives like the Triple Crown over at Wikipedia to encourage users to bring articles to FA status... but I think that has to come later.

I hope that's helpful. Wish I could chip in more myself, but for the foreseeable future I'm afraid my contributions both here and at Wikipedia will be limited to fixing the occasional typo. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 04:11, April 22, 2012 (UTC)

That's good advice! Thanks for taking the time to give it. Congratulations on fatherhood! And whatever edits you can give here between feedings will be gratefully accepted. Remember: you're still an admin here — whether you like it or not!
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">21:32: Mon 23 Apr 2012 

I wasn't even sure I still had the admin bit here. "So many parts! And hardly used!" —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 11:22, April 24, 2012 (UTC)

Active admin

I'm glad that you are back editing here at TARDIS. Just to let you know, if you are staying, which I hope that you are, you might want to change your status from inactive to active here; at the list of administrators. Thanks. MM/Want to talk? 00:27, April 25, 2012 (UTC)

I honestly don't know whether I'll be sticking around or not. If you look at my contribution history, you'll see that my pattern of editing is not what you'd call consistent — partly due to my erratic work commitments, and partly due to my general lack of responsibility. (Bit like the Doctor, really.) I sort of feel like if I list myself as an active admin, I'm liable to disappear for another 5 years, whereas if I stay on the inactive list I might actually stick around for a while and help. :)

Tell you what— if I'm still editing here in a week, I'll change my status. :) —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 01:42, April 25, 2012 (UTC)

Oh, who am I kidding — I'm active. Changed the page. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 03:24, April 29, 2012 (UTC)

infinity doctors

I offer my apologies for my lack of careful writing that have given you offense. I have no opinion on whether The Infinity Doctors should be canonical -- I cannot, since I have not examined the text. I have no issue with people who think it should be canonical or should not be canonical. I do take issue with the reasoning that it should be "semi-canonical" or that a "According to some sources" label" is not a clear warning sign that a piece may have severe continuity issues that may render it non-canonical.

If you feel that an apology in the discussion, let me know and I will make my apology there too. Boblipton ^{talk to me} 16:04, April 25, 2012 (UTC)

No need — the apology here is both appreciated and sufficient.

As for the "according to some sources" phrasing, I think it may be a necessary evil. Ultimately, the game we're playing here ("let's try to make 49 years' worth of Doctor Who fit into a single, coherent narrative") is futile, since there are so many contradictions even in undisputedly canonical material (who was responsible for the destruction of Atlantis? When are the UNIT stories really set?). All we can do is present the evidence to the reader and let him or her decide what to "count". Sometimes, we throw up our hands and say, "OK, there's just no way to make this fit." But that should be a last resort, and I think that "according to some sources" is an acceptable step short of declaring a story non-canonical. You are, of course, free to disagree, but I hope that you can see that the argument in favor of the "some accounts" wording isn't just "I like this and want to include it." —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 17:15, April 25, 2012 (UTC)

Comic images

Sorry, you and Tybort must've posted at roughly the same time. I kinda missed that you'd asked me several times about the Griffen thing. Here's the deal with comic images. People can get widescreen or 4:3 images 8/10ths of the time, so I'll tend to just reject an image that's not widescreen until they come back and say, "Actually, there really is nothing better." The widescreen thing is not quite so stringently enforced for comics, but at the same time it's mportant to occasionally tell people to try, or else we end up with some horribly long shots.

Better than me gabbin' is for you to check out Tardis:Guide to images#Comics, where you'll see a number of different shots compared and contrasted.

Also, I went through an extensive tutorial with user:OttselSpy25, which I think is now on his latest archived talk page. You might find some of the descriptions there instructive, but I think he changed some of the pictures so they don't demonstrate the flaws as clearly. Still, you might want to take a gander at user talk:OttselSpy25/Archive 1#Image selection.

As pertains this particular image we're talking about, I'd go for http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v478/josiahrowe/Griffen1.jpg, but with modification. I'd get rid of the word balloon, which is super easy with monochromatic stuff like this. Just set your paint to the paper color and paint it out. Then I'd crop it back a bit so it wasn't quite so wide. (We do allow limited photo manipulation with comics to get rid of paper yellowing and to remove the entirety of word balloons.)

Hope that was helpful!
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">01:11: Fri 04 May 2012 

Thanks for the pointers — but unfortunately my Photoshop skills are more or less nonexistent. (Actually, I don't even have Photoshop on my computer.) I cropped and resized the scan in Preview on my Mac, which is about the sum of my image manipulation ability.

But looking at your discussion with OS25, I'm seeing another problem — I don't have the source material for that strip myself. I've only read scans that were (illegally) put up on the web, and that's where I got the image from. So technically, I suppose I don't have the ability to make an image for Griffen at all. (Those Alan Moore "Black Sun" strips haven't been reprinted, have they? His other two have been, but I don't recall seeing his three Gallifrey stories reprinted — which is a pity.)

Anyway, it looks like I'd better let somebody else handle the images for this one. (I only made the article because I remembered the character's name when I was making the disambiguation page Griffin.) —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 01:32, May 4, 2012 (UTC)

DWTV

Thanks for the fixes on the DWTV template! I also noticed that Robots of Death is misnamed as Robots of Evil, Nightmare of Eden is misspelled as "Nightmare of Ede," and Warrior's Gate lacks an apostrophe. Could you fix these as well? Memnarc ^{talk to me} 09:01, May 4, 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 15:45, May 4, 2012 (UTC)

Atkinson

Well, I'm not arguing for the immutability of the text. Indeed, it wasn't something I gave acres of thought to. I was just shocked that the article was still alleging that Atkinson was the regenerated form of McGann. But I do think the word "overwhelmingly" isn't hyperbole. There was only 1 respondent who argued the thing was canonical. And there were, what, over 10 against the idea? I mean, "overwhelming" is a word that admits of a lot of hyperbole, but rarely have we had debates that ended so convincingly. Sure, there was nuance amongst the opinions, but as a general and simple explanation of the discussion, it's accurate to say that COFD was overwhelmingly rejected by the community.

That said, I certainly welcome your improvements. Obviously, you've greatly enhancced the lead. But the word overwhelming, or something equally superlative, should stay. Overly complicated, nuanced language at that article will allow some people to thin that there's some kind of wiggle room. At the end of the day, all that really matters is that we simply state that the guy isn't a part of the DWU, and that there's a community discussion which overwhelmingly decided that we would adopt that stance. So, yeah, go to town and change the wording, but please don't introduce doubt or nuance on for a discussion that went 90& in one direction.
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">05:22: Sun 13 May 2012 

Works for me :)
czechout<staff /> ☎ ✍  <span style="">06:05: Sun 13 May 2012 

Typo in Stories template

Hello. I just wanted to point out that on the Stories template, Let's Kill Hitler is misspelled as "Let's Killer Hitler". I was just wondering if you could fix it, since editing it is locked. Thanks. --Frohman Talk 18:07, May 21, 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that! It's fixed now. —Josiah Rowe ^{talk to me} 18:10, May 21, 2012 (UTC)